


I'm Running With The Sons Of Liberty

by chasing_the_sterek



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins, Assassin Alexander Hamilton, BAMF Alex, BAMF Hamilton, Barista John Laurens, George Washington runs the assassin creed, M/M, Sons Of Liberty Assassin Creed, Sons Of Liberty assassins, Yorktown the coffee shop, for want of a better word, i guess, ok so this is really weird just try and stick with it if you can, theoretically a coffee shop au?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 07:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7213465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasing_the_sterek/pseuds/chasing_the_sterek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex is fairly sure assassins aren't meant to like cats and libraries as much as he does.</p><p>It certainly doesn't seem to fit with how most people view them (including some of his own), but maybe he should just embrace it - holler <i>screw the stereotypes,</i> make a year's worth of popcorn, and marathon Disney films.</p><p>Who cares if he cries at <i>The Lion King?</i></p><p>His cat, Philip, isn't exactly going to tell on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Running With The Sons Of Liberty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Theninjabear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theninjabear/gifts).



> Because she dragged me into this fandom and laughed at me when I fell in love with it.
> 
> Okay, so I usually don't go for massive AUs like this one, but this idea came to me and I got invested so HERE GOES

Alex is fairly sure assassins aren't meant to like cats and libraries as much as he does.

He'd Googled it, once - looked up the definition, studied the stereotype for hours, staring at everything closely to catch every tiny detail.

Apparently, assassins are ghosts. Hitmen. According to drawings, designs for outfits, and cosplays he'd found on the internet, assassins are people who can blend in with the crowd as easy as breathing, but who always manage to hide about seven million weapons on them, even under tight clothing or dresses (the latter of which which somehow never really seems to be a problem for Alex). They're shadows of people they used to be; people theorise about how broken they are, how much they suffer and work to get to the point where they don't care about the deaths they leave in their wake. They have no digital footprint. They all sleep so lightly they can hear a footstep two stories up in the deepest part of their sleep cycle. They don't have a sense of humour, and if somehow they do it's dark and morbid.

Alex had rolled his eyes and shut his laptop when he got to the part of the internet that were sure assassins were all incredibly advanced robots and the government were holding out on society.

And the bit about all assassins being blisteringly smart? Please. That didn't apply to everyone in the business - well, Jefferson was an assassin, wasn't he? And Madison, though Alex admits he isn't quite as much of a charity case as Jefferson.

Lord knows how _Seabury_ got in.

And the other end of the scale - that assassins are just dumb thugs who follow their master's orders? Washington doesn't hire people like that. They're a burden to the system - no benefit at all - and they wouldn't hesitate to sell all of the information at their fingertips to the highest bidder. Not to mention that they're a pain in the ass to train.

Violent? Sure, if assassins want to be they could be _extremely_ violent, but if an assassin were to hear a bump in the night they certainly wouldn't try to immediately kill it with a huge-ass pistol that they keep on their _bedside table,_ of all the fucking places.

Alex can think of at least one hundred ways to kill a person off the top of his head (varying from an instant death to ones that take months, possibly even a whole year), so yeah, they have good memory, but he doesn't remember the numberplate of the first car he tailed or the eye colour of his first target or the name of some asshole's daughter. And, if he's honest with himself, if he's not on a job Alex sucks at what _month_ it is, let alone what day or time it is.

But still, assassins aren't all muscle. One of Alex's favourite missons (well, he has a lot of favourites, but this one is definitely right up there on the list) had been to stalk someone online and send puns and random messages of varying length, intensity, randomness, and level of threat to them at ass-o'clock times in the morning, leaving them up just long enough to be seen before taking them down, until the recipient was sent to an asylum for "making up crazy stories to get attention."

(Well, the puns and all that shit hadn't _quite_ been specified in the briefing, but Washington had had that glint in his eyes which meant that this guy had seriously had it coming and Alex could do whatever he liked to torment him before he was taken out.)

In reality, assassins are just the shadows on the internet - the ones that know what you've been Googling and know about the way you hate that your dog has more followers than you. They send anonymous, untraceable essays marked only with the line _Your Obedient Servant_ to people in power to keep them in line.

But assassins aren't all work and no play. Alex is pretty sure King George's assassin order (because, seriously, how can a group with a headcount that tiny think it can fight the world and win? England barely even counts as a small business after the Sons Of Liberty broke off and fought for its independence) just slack off all day and drink tea with their pinkies out. They certainly never seem to actually do anything, at least.

And God knows what Seabury does all day, because he churns out one half-assed report per month and spends the rest of his time messaging someone like his life depends on it.

(Seabury laughed, once, at one of the messages. The laugh had been a high-pitched titter, yet throaty and creaky like a record player being stuck on the same section, repeating it over and over, like an asthmatic donkey braying with a sore throat as it's tortured personally by Satan. Everyone in the entire building heard it. Nobody had even remotely liked it. Even the cleaning lady had hated it, and she was deaf.)

(Alex bought noise-cancelling headphones and keeps them in his desk drawer for situations just like that one.)

Alex drags himself out of his thoughts stubbornly, noting the coffee he's made without noticing and the way he's put his hair into a messy ponytail without really thinking about it. There's a pregnant silence in the air, like his very apartment is waiting for him to do something exciting. Like the kid on the tricycle from _The Incredibles._

"Well," he says to the empty air of his flat. "This is boring as all hell."

Alex leans back a little, eyes half-shut and looking at the ceiling, tongue sticking out a little in concentration, and pulls a case file closer to himself. He can read up on his new assignment as best he can, maybe even get started, because he's sure as hell not going to get to sleep now he's had caffeine.  
  
@#£%&**&%£#@   
"Hey!" Alex's target bellows angrily, waving his sawn-off shotgun in the air wildly, squinting into the darkness like he'll be able to see Alex if he squints hard enough. "Thief! Scoundrel!"

"Says the person who stole important documents from the President of America," Alex points out helpfully, throwing his voice so it sounds like it's coming from multiple shadows to throw off the ex-government worker's aim (thank God for ventriloquism).

The man makes a frustrated noise at the confusion, waving his shotgun around a little more desperately than before. "I'll shoot you!"

"Ah, yes," Alex agrees, silently drawing his evidence camera out of his bag and turning the flash on. He doesn't _need_ the flash on, really, but it's hilarious to watch their faces when they realise Alex now has photographic evidence of them, and he can use the brief moment where they blink the flash out of their retinas to get to a safer place if he needs to. "Death by illegally-possessed gun. Did you know that they'll be able to trace the bullets you shoot back to you?"

He doesn't bother throwing his voice this time, just letting the man turn to face Alex in full and giving him wider access to photograph his face -

And photograph it Alex does, the flash lighting up the garden and the little _shnick_ sound effect as the photo is taken making the man's face scrunch up in a mixture of terror and anger.

"You little -"

Alex _runs._  
**  
**@#£% &**&%£#@  
  
He does a little tagging on the way to his coffee shop - well. It's not _his_ coffee shop, because he doesn't own it, but it's his favourite and he's a regular and their barista is adorable, all curly hair and freckles sprinkled over the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones -

Alex puffs out a long sigh, shaking the thoughts out of his head, and sprays another one of Rafiki's Simba symbols (ha, Simba symbols) through the stencil before moving on. (All of the assassins who run with the Sons Of Liberty keep the stencils in their pockets, bags, or whatever.) The graffiti tag ends up the size of his hand, an _S.O.L_ stamped along Simba's tail.

It's a tag, a mark of territory. Seeing one of these means you're in an area controlled by the Sons Of Liberty. Each assassin has a different colour of spray paint - Washington's is white, because he snagged it before anyone else could and as the boss he got first dibs. Alex had managed to steal the rights to an awesome shimmering gold colour, and Burr had had to settle for a sort of vaguely muddy teal because he was so busy sulking about the gold that he missed all of the other good colours too. And yes, his expression was _hilarious._

Anyway, tagging aside, Alex was going to go and see the cute barista instead of going home, let alone to bed, and nobody was going to stop him.

"Coffee," Alex demands as he pushes open the door to the little shop/café thing. It's cosy, with little booths and mismatched sofas and oak tables, with photos of the staff and their families covering the walls. The owners named it Yorktown, and while originally the name had seemed outlandishly weird it had come to grow on him. He couldn't imagine it any other way, with its blank-faced college students in the mornings traipsing in to grab a styrofoam cup to go (Alex tries to guess what their majors are based on what they're wearing, what they're carrying, and what appears to be their outlook on the world) and its date nights (where he rates how well the date will go on a scale of one to ten and tries to predict how the relationship would end up being like if they got into one).

"Hello, Alexander," the barista says. "How are you, Alexander? It's so nice to see you, Alexander."

"Peasant," Alex acknowledges, grinning. He _knows_ the barista's name is John Laurens, he really does, but he loves the way John's nose scrunches up when he calls him a peasant or a lowlife or whatever so he's going to resolutely stick with it until directly informed he should do otherwise.

True to form, John wrinkles his nose with fond-looking irritation as he crosses his arms behind the counter. "Usual?"

"Yes, please," Alex agrees, collapsing into the seat of his usual booth (he's hidden from all the cameras, here, as well as from outside, but he can see John working at the counter when he's there and he gets to focus with background noise that's not the music from his Spotify playlist, where the same adverts circulate twenty times per day and he repeatedly gets suggested songs that he hates shoved at him) and sliding his laptop out of his bag.

"What are you working on today?" John inquires. He sets a coffee cup down at Alex's side, gentle enough that it doesn't spill but forceful enough that it makes a satisfying _clunk_ when it hits the table, and Alex can't decide if it's a good thing that John knows his coffee orders off by heart by now or not.

"Secret," Alex replies, with a little smirk as John wrinkles his nose again, and takes a far too big gulp of coffee.

"Careful, that's hot," John advises, eyes sparkling with humour as he watches Alex make a face at the temperature.

 _Not as hot as you,_ Alex thinks.

"Maybe I like drinking the flames of hell," Alex says.

John scoffs, turning back and walking back to the counter. He vaults back over, one hand on the countertop and legs perfectly positioned so he doesn't hit anything.

Alex drowns a shocked noise in coffee that's still a little too hot. John's certainly never done _that_ before -

Alex catches movement outside the window (reflected in one of John's shiny shiny pizza ovens) in his peripherals. His eyes lock on, the assassin side of him booting back online as he scans them.

It's a group of men, looking to be around twenty to twenty-six. They're dressed in various baggy hoodies and pants (from camo patterned to just plain white), with fingerless gloves and hard-wearing sneakers on their feet and beanies on all of their heads. They're all facing away, at the street, possibly just using Yorktown's bright, warm lighting to text someone or fiddle with something on one of their many backpacks, but. . .

But something's. . . _off_ about them.

Maybe it's the way they're all dressed the same. Sure, colours are different, but the pants style seems to be uncannily similar, even if the patterns vary, and the jackets are definitely the exact same brand. The shoes are identical, same for the dark grey gloves, and the beanies are all jet black. The backpacks are all that off-brand hiking ones you can get from the corner shop down the road, exactly the same colour scheme and everything. Even the men's statures and postures are similar. Maybe it's the way they've all turned around and are now staring about the interior of Yorktown, eyes flickering from one booth to another to John behind the counter (who by now has stopped waving awkwardly and is squinting at the boys) to the shadows to another booth. Maybe it's the way what Alex thought were beanies were actually balaclavas, pushed up to just past their foreheads so they don't get arrested from walking down the street. As he and John watch, they reach up and drag them down slowly, covering up white-blond hair and black hair and everything inbetween.

"Are they homeless?" John wonders aloud, flipping the fake bit of counter up so he can jog to the door. "Do they want me to invite them in, or something?"

Alex is too busy trying to work out what's off about them to answer. John stills for a second, glancing back at him for a moment and then continuing as he visibly decides that the other man is lost in thought.

During the brief time John's looking in his direction Alex catches a glimpse of a gun as one of the men shifts to adjust his balaclava.

His eyes widen. "John -"

"I'm gonna let them in," John decides, reaching for the door handle. "No homeless person freezes to death on my shift."

_"John, no, they've got -"_

The barrel of a revolver noses its way through the crack in the door John's created as he's opened it, quickly followed by the man with camo pants.

"Put your hands up," he says silkily. "This is a robbery."

**Author's Note:**

> By the way, [this is my tumblr if you want it.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/total-master-of-geekiness)


End file.
